We’ve seen an explosion of social spaces during the past couple of years – Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, etc. Many organizations have built their own social space to provide the communication needs of their people. I live in several virtual worlds or neighborhoods, some public and some private, and I just got bit by an ugly downside of this!
I teach one MBA class in which we use an online world that includes many of the social networking tools including email. I teach that class one semester every other year.
Recently, unknown to me, a whole bunch of new people moved into this world. They represent a group that I’m very, very interested in — prospective students! They are the life blood of a teacher. No students. No one to teach. No reason for existence! One of the new kids on the block decided to send me a communication via this space. Since I’m not teaching the MBA course this semester, I don’t frequent that space and completely missed the communication. Until today, when I was notified that a major change had been made to the space, so I decided I should make sure I still exist in that space. Upon entering the space I was greeted with a 2 month old message from a perspective student! Horror of horrors! Not a good way to impress such a person to invest tens of thousands of dollars to come to my institution for a 21st century liberal arts education!
Communication is a key aspect of this type of education. We sell it. We brag on it. We promote it. We teach it. But in this case, it seems obvious that WE MISSED IT. Or at least I missed it. It never dawned on me that a prospective student even had access to that space.
What’s the solution?
• remove myself from all these extra spaces? not going to happen
• spend time in each space every day? not enough time in a day!
• notify everyone everywhere that I prefer to receive my communications in a specific space? while I would like this, I don’t think everyone else would like to have to keep track of which space I prefer!
In my opinion, as a seasoned bit builder, and keeping in line with Alan Cooper’s exhortations about software interfaces in his outstanding book The Inmates are Running the Asylum, the only reasonable solution is to improve the software! The space should, recognizing the importance of communication, give me the option of having my emails automatically forwarded to another space. There are other variations I can think of on this option, but I’ll leave those for the interaction designers of this world to decide. May their very small tribe increase so we can free the inmates from running the asylum!
A word to businesses – be careful to instruct your people to know which spaces they are in and make sure they don’t miss any important business related interactions in those spaces! Poor communication is not good for business.
This entry was posted on Friday, December 4th, 2009 at http://woosters.org/dan/?p=584
